What few dare to say aloud about the NYTimes scandal

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The New York Times has acted honorably in
dealing with the wreckage of the Jayson Blair
scandal. It published corrections, 54 in all,
on Blair's inaccurate reporting. When at last
it became obvious that Blair was plagiarizing,
making up quotes, and filing stories from
places he never visited, the Times applied
pressure and Blair resigned. At this writing,
the Times is preparing a long article detailing
Blair's checkered career. This is the way newspapers are supposed to
behave--put it all out on the table.

But there is an issue
that the Times may not
be ready to
discuss--whether racial
preferences are
implicated in what went
wrong. Blair was editor
of the University of
Maryland student
newspaper. After
dropping out of college
as a senior, he was
installed as a Times
reporter at age 23, with
little experience, just
some freelancing and
brief internships at the
Times and the Boston Globe. Question: Isn't this too far, too fast, and would
this young African-American's meteoric rise to staff reporter be likely for a
white reporter with comparable credentials? It appears as though the Times
knew early on that hiring Blair was a dicey proposition.

Mickey Kaus, writing at Slate.com, raised the question of preference by
offering this analogy: Let's suppose, to promote commerce in Utah, federal
trucking standards were relaxed on Utah trucks and a disastrous crash
occurred when a truck's brakes failed. Would the press, politicians, and the
public say, "But non-Utah trucks crash all the time," or "You haven't proved a
direct causal connection between the Utah-preference program and this
crash." No, Kaus wrote. They would just demand that preferences be
abolished so that all trucks everywhere would have to meet the same
standards. This has to happen in journalism, too.

Scandalous. Everybody knows that this argument tends to trigger cries of
"Racism!" So let's stipulate: The overwhelming majority of plagiarism cases
and journalistic scandals have been the work of whites. As a reminder, look
who is back in the news--Stephen Glass, retired fabricator of gripping but
totally false news stories for the New Republic.

But once you create preferences, you run the risk of increasing the number of
screw-ups among the preferred group. Relaxing standards or pushing an
unprepared candidate into a high-pressure job tends to increase the odds of
trouble. All of us figure this out rather quickly when the preferred group is
relatives of the boss or people who went to the boss's college. It's true of
identity groups as well.

Another factor is that preference programs carry an implication that
lower-quality work will be tolerated. Max Frankel, the former executive editor
at the Times, admitted this in 1990, though minus the clear reference to
preferences. Since blacks are "a precious few" at the Times, he said, "if they
were less than good, I'd probably stay my hand at removing them too
quickly."

He obviously meant this to be tolerant and generous, as part of an effort to
make up for the long years in which blacks were totally absent from or very
rare in the newsroom. But he increased resentment all around--blacks knew
they were being demeaned in a kindly way; whites heard an announcement of
double standards.

It seems as though the Times was inordinately tolerant of Blair. His bosses
say they leaned on him repeatedly about his inaccuracies. Fair enough. Blair
said his work was hampered by "recurring personal issues." Earlier he told his
bosses he suffered from the shock of losing a relative in the 9/11 attack on
the Pentagon. But sources at the Times say Blair's problems go back well
before 9/11. One source said the charge that Blair was making up quotes
goes back to his earliest days at the paper. Two reporters said protective staff
members would do Blair's reporting for him when he didn't show up for work.
Another reporter, who refused to work with Blair any longer, told the metro
desk about his erratic behavior. My assistant here at U.S. News, Margaret
Menge, turned up a Boston Globe article by Blair (April 18, 1999) that
contains quotes nearly identical to those published in the Washington Post a
week before.

Alarm bells should have gone off at the Times years ago. Or perhaps we
should say that the bells were going off--all those quotes being denied by
Blair's sources. But the Times seemed unwilling to hear or to take any action.
Last week, Howard Kurtz of the Post interviewed a Times editor, who said the
paper had come to realize that Blair was compiling a substandard record. The
Blair scandal is not just evidence that reporters can go off track. It's a
reminder that diversity programs can undermine the standards that made
great institutions great.